Oenosthesia is a ground breaking interactive exploration of sound and taste created by sound artist and wine writer, Jo Burzynska (aka Stanier Black-Five). This soundscape using her recordings of the vineyards and wineries of Irpinia in Italy, explores the significant way that sound influences the perception of taste through the combination of the changing timbres and frequencies in the piece with a selection of different wines from the region. The work was created last year during Burzynska’s residency in Southern Italy, and is possibly the first piece of gustatory/sound art created both from and including wine. It was premiered at the Interferenze New Art Festival’s Factory of Art Rurality and Media 2012 (FARM2012) in Tufo, Italy and this programme is the first time the installation has been presented in New Zealand.

As a prelude to the evening, there will be a showing of “FARM – Factory of Art, Rurality and (New) Media”, directed by Interferenze Director, Leandro Pisano. This short film documents Burzynska’s project and the “Suoni dal confine” residency programme of which it was part, in which international artists were invited to embrace rurality in the creation of works of sonic art in the Italian countryside. Burzynska will then personally introduce the project, her own theories and the science of sensory interaction before those attending experience Oenosthesia. The installation lasts 25 minutes and includes tasting of three wines from Irpinia.

Jo Burzynska is one of the country’s leading wine critics, writing a weekly wine column in the New Zealand Herald’s Viva magazine, as well as contributing to specialist wine publications worldwide. She is also an active sound artist, recording and performing internationally under the name, Stanier Black-Five, making work largely based on the manipulation of her own environmental recordings. In recent years she has been exploring the synergies between taste and sound through her own research and hosting music and wine matching workshops.

With thanks to Irpinia’s regional consortium of IGAL Partenio, which sponsored the residency and the featured wines; Leandro Pisano for curating the residency and the Audio Foundation for hosting the event.